Contract Bridge

Power of positive thinking

It is estimated that even the best bridge players get to their optimum contract only 90 percent of the time. This is perhaps a surprising statistic, considering that the top experts employ many sophisticated bidding devices to help guide them to the ideal contract.

For a good example of how easy it is to miss the mark, take this case where a normal sequence of bids led North-South to a contract that seemed certain to fail. Three notrump was laydown, but was not easy to reach.

However, good play allowed declarer to get home safely. Faced with four probable losers — two hearts and two diamonds — he managed to make one of them disappear by converting his seemingly useless jack of clubs into a trick.

After winning West’s queen of hearts with dummy’s ace, declarer immediately led the club three toward his jack! East put up the queen and played the king and another heart to West’s ten. West shifted to the queen of diamonds, but South was now firmly in the driver’s seat.

He took the diamond with the ace, cashed the A-Q of spades and club jack, and crossed to dummy’s ten of spades. He then discarded his two losing diamonds on the A-K of clubs to finish with 10 tricks.

It is true that South lost a club trick he did not have to lose, but in so doing, he avoided losing two diamond tricks. He realized from the start that his only real chance for the contract was to score three club tricks instead of two, and all his moves were made with that goal in mind.